ACROSS Pakistan, the stories that shape this Human Rights Day unfold quietly in homes, settlements, villages, neighbourhoods where rights become urgent needs. In these places, girls are sometimes withdrawn from school long before adulthood. Women weigh the risk of reporting abuse against the danger of staying silent. Families negotiate impossible choices shaped by economic hardship, honour, patriarchy, or fear.

This year, however, Pakistan enters Human Rights Day with a shift both significant and delicate. The country has taken formidable steps acknowledging long-standing harm. Balochistan passed a law prohibiting child marriage, setting the minimum age at 18 years. Islamabad enacted its own child marriage restraint law earlier this year. Most recently, Pakistan’s parliament adopted the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2025, defining abuse in its full breadth and recognising at a federal level that violence inside the home is not a private matter but a public concern.

These measures arise directly from the experiences of women and children who have carried the weight of silence for decades. The significance of these laws lies in what they validate. For years, human rights organisations, health professionals, feminists and educators have documented the consequences of early marriage: girls forced into adulthood before their bodies or minds are prepared;........

© Dawn